[Dialogue] The People We Have Been Waiting For

[FacilitationFla at aol.com]

The People We Have Been Waiting For   
By _THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per)  
Published: December 2,  2007 
It was 60 degrees on Thursday in Washington, well above  normal, and as I 
slipped away for some pre-Christmas golf, I found myself  thinking about a 
wickedly funny story that The Onion, the satirical newspaper,  ran the other day: “
Fall Canceled after 3 Billion Seasons”:Skip to next  paragraph 
“Fall, the long-running  series of shorter days and cooler nights, was 
canceled earlier this week after  nearly 3 billion seasons on Earth, sources 
reported  Tuesday. 
“The classic period of the year, which once occupied a  coveted slot between 
summer and winter, will be replaced by new, stifling  humidity levels, 
near-constant sunshine and almost no precipitation for  months. 
“‘As much as we’d like to see it stay, fall will not be  returning for 
another season,’ National Weather Service president John Hayes  announced during a 
muggy press conference Nov. 6. ‘Fall had a great run, but  sadly, times have 
changed.’ ... The cancellation was not without its share of  warning signs. In 
recent years, fall had been reduced from three months to a  meager two-week 
stint, and its scheduled start time had been pushed back later  and later each 
year.” 
You should never extrapolate about global warming from  your own weather, but 
it is becoming hard not to — even for professionals.  Consider the final 
report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate  Change (I.P.C.C.), which 
was just issued and got far too little attention. It  concluded that since the 
I.P.C.C. began its study five years ago, scientists had  discovered much 
stronger climate change trends than previously realized, such as  far more 
extensive melting of Arctic ice, and therefore global efforts to  reverse the growth 
of greenhouse gas emissions have to begin  immediately. 
“What we do in the next two to three years will determine  our future,” said 
the I.P.C.C. chairman, Rajendra  Pachauri. 
And sweet-sounding “global warming” doesn’t really  capture what’s likely 
to happen. I prefer the term “global weirding,” coined by  Hunter Lovins, 
co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, because the rise in  average global 
temperature is going to lead to all sorts of crazy things — from  hotter heat 
spells and droughts in some places, to colder cold spells and more  violent 
storms, more intense flooding, forest fires and species loss in other  places. 
While the Bush team came into office brain dead on the  climate issue and 
will leave office with a perfect record of having done nothing  significant to 
mitigate climate change, I’m heartened that our country is  increasingly alive 
on this challenge.  
First, Google said last week that it was going to invest  millions in 
developing its own energy business. Google described its goal as “RE  < C” — 
renewable energy that is cheaper than coal — adding: “We’re busy  assembling our own 
internal research and development group and hiring a team of  engineers ... 
tasked with building one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity  that is cheaper 
than coal.” That could power all of San Francisco.   
Its primary focus, said Google.org’s energy expert, Dan  Reicher, will be to 
advance new solar thermal, geothermal and wind solutions  “across the valley 
of death.” That is, so many good ideas work in the lab but  never get a chance 
to scale up because they get swallowed by a lack of financing  or difficulties 
in implementation. Do not underestimate these  people. 
Last week, I also met with two groups of M.I.T. students  who blew me away. 
One was the M.I.T. Energy Club, which was founded in 2004 by a  few grad 
students discussing energy over beers at a campus bar. Today it has  600-plus 
members who have put on scores of events focused on building energy  expertise among 
M.I.T. students and faculty, and “fact-based analysis,”  including a trip to 
Saudi  Arabia. 
Then I got together with three engineering undergrads who  helped launch the 
Vehicle Design Summit — a global, open-source, collaborative  effort, managed 
by M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world,  including in 
India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric  hybrid within 
three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or  designs. I 
thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are  building a 
hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, “will demonstrate a 95 percent  reduction 
in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to  grave” and 
provide “200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better.” The Linux of  cars! 
They’re not waiting for G.M. Their goal, they explain on  their Web site — 
_vds.mit.edu_ (http://vds.mit.edu/)  — is “to identify the key characteristics 
of events like  the race to the moon and then transpose this energy, passion, 
focus and urgency”  on catalyzing a global team to build a clean car. I just 
love their tag line.  It’s what gives me hope:  
“We are the people we have been waiting for.”  
P.S.  Do visit _vds.mit.edu_ (http://vds.mit.edu/)   This is an amazing site: 
 See the global participants,  infrastructure and timeline for their plan.  
Cyn.
 
Cynthia N.  Vance, M. A.
Strategics International Inc.
Miami, Florida Office:  305-378-1327
Venice, Florida Office: 941-483-9165
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